Thanks everyone for your responses. There are so many choices that sorting them out can be quite a daunting task. But the quest for quality is worth the effort.

Bachus, that’s quite an array of virtual instruments, I’ll certainly have to start much smaller initially but what you have put together would be a great goal to work towards. Though I haven’t heard it in person I do like what I’ve read about Native Instruments especially Kontakt and Bandstand and it seems that almost everyone agrees that B4II is the best Hammond emulation available.

I had originally wanted to stay away from Steinberg because of the whole dongle thing but I must admit that their Virtual Guitarist, Virtual Bassist, and Virtual Drummer appear to be the perfect tools to use for creating great custom styles.
I noticed that you use Steinberg’s The Grand as your main piano. I have considered Synthology’s Ivory. But everyone’s take on the perfect piano sound is so subjective. Thank you for bringing the vst host Chainer to my attention as I had not looked at it before. It looks very promising as a virtual rack to hold the various instruments.

AJ thanks for the info on Hypersonic II that’s good to know that it can load faster. Some of the titles you mentioned I am not familiar with at all but I will do some internet searches to check them out.

Donny & Starkeeper I agree with you both that a softsynth / arranger setup with the speed, stability, and ease of use of a stand alone keyboard is a definite need and surely can’t be too far in the future. To that end I’m still keeping a close eye on Wersi and Lionstracs. If the Wersi Ikarus had 88 hammer action keys it would be a definite contender for me and on the Lionstracs Mediastation, I’ll reserve judgment until I can demo it for myself.

I noticed that no one has mentioned Tascam’s Giga Studio 3. The $129.00 for the 10 GB of samples in the ensemble version seems like a good deal but I don’t know how fast the samples may load. Does anyone have any experience with GS3?

Anyway thanks and keep the responses coming. I’m learning a lot from you guys.